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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 4 Hansard (16 April) . . Page.. 898 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

It is, therefore, important that proposed reforms should be carefully assessed on a case-by-case basis, rather than being `steamrolled' through as part of a package of measures based on an ideological notion of promoting competition.

I think that is why the Greens instigated this inquiry. That is really all that we are asking should happen. The results, I hope, will mean that the whole process will be much more accountable and that we will have an opportunity in this place to say, "Stop"; to say, "Let us see what we can do to improve these sorts of anomalies that are appearing". But, as it was, the whole thing was much too behind closed doors. We had an interesting submission from COSBOA, the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia. They also underlined the fact that so-called competition has led to an increasing concentration of large firms in the retail sector, to the detriment of thousands of smaller businesses in Australia. I think we have about four or five main firms in charge of most of the retailing in the ACT.

The question of community service obligations was very focused in this committee inquiry. There is an interesting statement from Quiggin on that, too, that I would like to read. He wrote:

The specification of CSOs tends to be a first step towards their elimination. In part this is a result of transparency. When the cost of CSOs is spelt out, it may become apparent that the benefits do not justify the costs. A less satisfactory reason for the vulnerability of CSOs is that CSOs appear as part of the budget sector, whereas the earnings of government business enterprises are `off-budget'. Governments are typically much more concerned about on-budget than off-budget expenditures, even though the economic implications are identical.

While we on the committee were certainly arguing for very clear identification of community service obligations, as we and a lot of people in the community obviously were quite nervous that they were going to disappear totally, as Quiggin points out, there is also a danger in that because once they do become an on-budget line they are more susceptible to cuts. If the reality is going to live up to the rhetoric that we heard from the Government, then we have to see a lot more input from the community on the development of those CSOs. In our report, four of the recommendations actually dealt with CSOs and how they can be developed and how they can stay accountable not just to the community but to this Assembly; so that we have an ongoing role of monitoring how services are being delivered, how people who require consideration are being treated and how the environment is being dealt with within these community service obligations.

ACTEW certainly was not sure what its CSOs were. It did not even seem to think it was appropriate that it be a part of definition of its CSOs. They thought it was clearly a role for the Government. You can see where we are starting from there. That is a major concern. I am sorry that we did not get a committee of inquiry into ACTEW's corporatisation, which we did argue for but, unfortunately, did not get enough support for here.

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